Revised Agreement -Deliver to Neighbour/First Time Delivery

[TrueBlueTerrier]

No. 385/14
Ref: 530
Date: 16th June 2014
To: Branches with POSTAL Members

Dear Colleague,

Revised Agreement - Deliver to Neighbour / First Time Delivery

Branches will be aware of the debates and updates at this year’s annual conference about the services currently being offered by competitors of Royal Mail regarding first time delivery of parcels.

We have identified in recent discussions with Royal Mail an opportunity off the back of an existing agreement ratified by the Postal Executive in September 2012 to be able to offer a similar, if not better, service than that being offered by competition.

Whilst first time delivery rates of competitors are generally high and in some cases higher than those of Royal Mail their definition of delivery is not the same as Royal Mail’s and we have no intention of lowering the standards of delivery provided by our members to that of the competitors. This is an area where our members can give Royal Mail the edge on competition through the quality of the service being provided.

We have therefore revised the existing agreement (attached) and placed the emphasis on delivering first time wherever possible but retained the discretion of the delivery OPG. Branches and Representatives will note that the date of the agreement is 2nd May 2014. This is when the document was agreed with Royal Mail. The Postal Executive endorsed the agreement on the 7th May 2014 and we have recently agreed a release date for this including supporting documentation and WTLL sessions etc following further discussions with Royal Mail.

The revised agreement is straightforward to avoid confusion and should not present our members who will be expected to carry out this service with any problems other than where they believe their safety is at risk or the security of the item(s) is at risk. The existing agreement has been deployed with very few operational problems being raised with the department since its introduction.

There is no definitive National Deployment date for this revised service as some offices are already operating this system successfully but as stated above there are dates for communications including WTLL sessions now in place and these will begin being rolled out and briefed into all delivery units week commencing 23rd June 2014.


The revised service will also remain subject to review under the auspices of the Safety, Customer Service and Quality Strand of the Integrated Delivery Programme where we will be able to assess the operational impact the revised service has had on delivery times, enquiry offices, redeliveries and complaints etc. How we might use PDAs to help us increase first time delivery success going forward is also part of the ongoing discussions with Royal Mail regarding ‘Service View’.

The P739 has been amended to cater for the service and stickers have also been supplied (attached).

We believe that the introduction of the revised service is a necessity at a time of increasing competition and this along with other new initiatives will help to offer sound alternatives to the services being offered by competitors and we fully support its national deployment.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 530
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org

Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson
CWU Assistant Secretary - Outdoor

[TrueBlueTerrier]

ROYAL MAIL & CWU NATIONALLY AGREED GUIDELINES

FIRST TIME DELIVERY - DELIVERY TO NEIGHBOUR


Introduction
The continued growth in the UK home-shopping market and customers’ expectations for greater delivery convenience means we need to improve customer experience by improving our first time delivery success. Delivery to Neighbour was launched nationwide in September 2012 after a successful trial.
Convenient or First Time delivery is becoming a critical competitive lever in this market and Delivery to Neighbour provides Royal Mail with an opportunity to provide a more reliable first time delivery rate than our competitors.
Most of our competitors attempt delivery to neighbour. In Royal Mail we have the advantage of outstanding in-depth local knowledge and we should use this to achieve higher success rates to help retain work and provide a platform to obtain more contracts as a consequence of an improved first time delivery service.
The investment in time to undertake Delivery to Neighbour means that customers get their items quickly and conveniently, resulting in higher customer satisfaction driving competitive advantage for Royal Mail versus other carriers. By offering the best service in the final mile, Royal Mail can win and hold more parcel volume, which helps to protect more high quality and well-paid jobs.

Royal Mail and CWU are fully supportive of the deployment of this revised initiative and believe it will have a positive impact on the service, our customers and parcel volumes going forward.

Service Outline and Operational Processes
.
Delivery to Neighbour will enable delivery OPG’s to deliver items that cannot be successfully delivered first time, to a neighbour instead.
A neighbour will be considered to be a person who lives within close proximity to the original address. They may be a next door neighbour or someone who lives sufficiently close by.
Delivery OPG’s will be free to use their initiative to decide which neighbour an item shall be left with, based on their local knowledge and experience.
If an appropriate neighbouring address is identified by a delivery OPG, they will ask the neighbour to take receipt of the item on behalf of the addressee. If the neighbour agrees to do so, the Delivery OPG will record the neighbouring address onto the P739 delivery card, and will then post this at the original address. Royal Mail Signed-For 1c and 2c items will require a signature from the receiving neighbour.
If an item cannot be delivered to a neighbour, for example
if there is no answer,
if the delivery OPG believes there is no appropriate alternative address where an item can be left, or
the neighbour refuses to sign for a RM Signed-for 1c or 2c item
then the item(s) should be returned to the Delivery Office in the normal way.




Opt-Out for Customers
Customers will still be able to opt out, this will include those who are having items delivered to them and neighbours who do not want to take things in. These customers will continue to be responsible for displaying an Opt-Out sticker on their letterbox or window or somewhere that is clearly visible to delivery staff
To do this the customer must contact Royal Mail Customer Services by telephone or by using the dedicated website that has been set up. A range of communications are being utilised to inform customers of the Opt-Out process.

Customers opting out will retain the option of collecting their items from their local delivery office. In addition the Opt Out customer must not be asked to accept an item for their neighbour. Delivery staff must therefore return the item to the delivery office using normal Undeliverable processes.

Trial product Specification
Packets, Tracked, and Recorded Signed for products are all included in the service.
Special Delivery and International items requiring a signature are not part of the service and normal operational processes will continue to apply to these items.

The process
Delivery OPG’s will continue to have the sole responsibility to decide if, when, and where, it is appropriate to deliver to a neighbour. However alternative delivery addresses should always be attempted except where the delivery OPG has reviewed or risk-assessed the alternative neighbour delivery options and has significant concerns over either their own safety, or the security of the item.
Any complaints arising as a consequence of the delivery OPG’s decision will be brought to the attention of the individual and CWU rep to find a mutually acceptable solution. Both parties recognise that there will be some additional walking involved in a second attendance call and returning to the original address with the P739, where this is not possible within existing duty time this may result in individuals having to extend beyond their scheduled finish time. Any extended delivery as a consequence of providing this service will be dealt with using normal local procedures.

Service Review
The provision of this enhanced service will remain under review as part of the Integrated Delivery Programme (IDP) going forward and will fall specifically under the remit of the Safety, Customer Service and Quality Strand, and will include the time necessary to carry out this service and any consequential impact on delivery times, enquiry offices, redeliveries and complaints etc. Consideration will also be given to other alternative means of improving customer service such as dedicated parcel deliveries within the delivery office structure, and how we might use PDAs to help us increase first time delivery success.

All information/data will be shared with the CWU and jointly analysed as part of the ongoing IDP.



Signed……………………………….. Signed………………………………………
Jane Hooper - Royal Mail Bob Gibson - CWU


Date: 2nd May 2014

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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[celerycelery]

Give us the time to complete our deliveries using correct equipment and we may consider delivery to a neighbour but whilst we are still expected to do a 5 hour delivery in 4 hours 30 mins due to a failed revision for the 2nd time then I personally wont be leaving any at any neighbours. And I cannot believe they have to put in an agreement that if we extend due to this overtime will be paid which I assume means this has caused issues in the past.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

As above, if they want a delivery to neighbour attempt for every attendance call parcel with no answer at the address, take ~50 deliver points of my walk to give me time for the neighbour attempts.

And if we really want to join Planet Reality, take another ~75 delivery points off my walk so that finishing on time having done a full indoor and outdoor task load (including the national weekly standard of 30min WTLL) is not as rare as Halley's Comet passing by.

[Spartacus]

Delivery OPG’s will continue to have the sole responsibility to decide if, when, and where, it is appropriate to deliver to a neighbour.

The only bit that matters.

[trythat]

I shall not be doing this any more than I do now. I've written about this before, we are different to other parcel companies and people do not want me knocking on their door every day to get rid of a parcel for a neighbour. It really should be a opt in.

TBH the way the CWU are going we'll be calling the postal comittee managers before the year is out. To many of them do not realise what a delivery is now. I don't like the way it's worded that OPG will stay out and extend by doing this, instead of doing a check on parcels and take off delivery points as others have said.

Another crap agreement by the CWU!

[halfull]

errr so when do we have time to walk up more drives & knock more doors??

Nowhere on here does it say the opg has not got to do this if he/she feels the time is not there on that day, this worries me as we wont be able to use this reason for not trying neighbour! ]

Thanks again cwu!

[lollollol]

Delivery OPG’s will continue to have the sole responsibility to decide if, when, and where, it is appropriate to deliver to a neighbour.

The only bit that matters.

It's the next sentence in the agreement that is the key imo...

Delivery OPG’s will continue to have the sole responsibility to decide if, when, and where, it is appropriate to deliver to a neighbour. However alternative delivery addresses should always be attempted except where the delivery OPG has reviewed or risk-assessed the alternative neighbour delivery options and has significant concerns over either their own safety, or the security of the item.

[Martin Walsh]

If we want to maintain jobs then we have to capture more work including more parcels to replace falling revenue and falling volumes from both DSA and indeed end to end delivery.

Yodel only pay on successful delivery , as do other companies.

Royal Mail have lost 30% year on year traffic from Amazon based on them deciding to do there ow delivery or paying self employed drivers.

The biggest single complaint from a customer is a 739 complaint it costs £25 to handle every complaint and then there is compensation on top to be paid.

Now if your not in an area where Amazon parcels have not declined and have either the same amount of attendance calls or more then if it takes you more time then this should be registered all be it the trials have shown that there is little overall difference from delivering to neighbour then having to pouch off and redeliver on a seperate day as requested by the customer.

Now some may not like this but we are in a different competitive world where the big supply companies like Amazon , ASOS and many more demand more. First time delivery arrangements or you don't get their business.

The CWU have to look at protecting jobs in that kind of market and if that means that you fill up your duty or even have to adjust your duty then that is what a responsible union would do in today's climate. There are many companies who failed to adapt to competition who have gone to the wall , KODAK , Woolwoth and Blockbusters are just 3 of many.

The joint statement still allows where a post person deems it unsafe to deliver to neighbour to use his or her discression. However how many parcels leave an office on a day and how many are 739 and put in the callers office before the OPG goes put. The PDA trials in the 20 offices have demonstrated that this is the case in some of those offices.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

The difference is Royal Mail are our employers and to some extent they can tell us what to do, We are the Unions employers and their first duty is to answer the concerns of their own members. At the moment it seems as though the Union is telling us what to do "because they know best". Some in the Union may claim that this is untrue, and it probably is, but if that becomes the general perception of members then......

Also the language of recent communications from the Union is hardly different than Royal Mails. Use of phrases such as "expected to carry out this service" instead of "strongly advised to carry out this service" highlight this. It might only be a change of a few words, but being told by a Union whats best for us is tantamount to treating members as children who can't see the big picture.

"If we want to maintain jobs" - has anyone actually asked the front line members want, and what does it mean. Plenty might want to maintain jobs based on hours paid, but are they wiling to do it if the delivery element is increased even further (which looks likely). Does the Union have anything in place to gauge the feelings of ordinary members, or even non-members before they deicide whats best for them . Hopefully its not all based on feedback when talking to members at meetings, as good as that can be,its not enough.

[lollollol]

This agreement, like many agreements, is fine in theory but in practice the reality is somewhat different... there's not going to be adjustments to delivery spans which in fact should of been a prerequisite before the agreement was ratified... it's just more work being put on to delivery staff who will have to have the argument with their DIM over either the booking of OT or cutting off on a daily basis... we all know how the story goes...

The amount of extra parcel traffic we get by providing this service is debatable... ditto the amount of traffic we have lost due to not delivering first-time...

[steve1873]

If we want to maintain jobs then we have to capture more work including more parcels to replace falling revenue and falling volumes from both DSA and indeed end to end delivery.

Yodel only pay on successful delivery , as do other companies.

Royal Mail have lost 30% year on year traffic from Amazon based on them deciding to do there ow delivery or paying self employed drivers.

The biggest single complaint from a customer is a 739 complaint it costs £25 to handle every complaint and then there is compensation on top to be paid.

Now if your not in an area where Amazon parcels have not declined and have either the same amount of attendance calls or more then if it takes you more time then this should be registered all be it the trials have shown that there is little overall difference from delivering to neighbour then having to pouch off and redeliver on a seperate day as requested by the customer.

Now some may not like this but we are in a different competitive world where the big supply companies like Amazon , ASOS and many more demand more. First time delivery arrangements or you don't get their business.

The CWU have to look at protecting jobs in that kind of market and if that means that you fill up your duty or even have to adjust your duty then that is what a responsible union would do in today's climate. There are many companies who failed to adapt to competition who have gone to the wall , KODAK , Woolwoth and Blockbusters are just 3 of many.

The joint statement still allows where a post person deems it unsafe to deliver to neighbour to use his or her discression. However how many parcels leave an office on a day and how many are 739 and put in the callers office before the OPG goes put. The PDA trials in the 20 offices have demonstrated that this is the case in some of those offices.

Where do you start with BS like this, seriously?

I posted this on the other thread:

Ok, for arguments sake, lets do a very basic look at some figures and try realistically put a time frame for this deliver to neighbour on average.

These are very conservative figures, and the amount of attendance calls can easily be 2 or 3 times what I am calculating, but it will give an idea.

Delivery points on walk 600

Attendance calls, say 1 in 20 to give us 30 attendance calls on an average day. Say half of those are not in - that gives us 15 attendance calls where we have to visit a neighbour. For each neighbour attempt (and I am assuming only 1 neighbour attempt per call) that may take an additional 1 minute to walk out of original recipients property and to the neighbours property. You then need to wait, what an additional minute on the neighbour answering the door and taking receipt of parcel/ signing for it. Then you need to walk that very same 1 minute walk back to the original address to leave a card notifying them where their parcel is. So all in, each deliver to a neighbour attempt is costing an additional ~3 minutes per attendance call. In this example, 45 minutes extra delivery time required to carry out the same work as before. Are we going to see our walks reduced by this amount - but based on real data/ attendance call counts etc?

If not, then forget it. I will be continuing as normal and circling no on the p739 sticker. If asked why no neighbour delivery was attempted I will simply say that I made an on the fly decision/ estimation that in doing so would not allow me to complete my delivery in my scheduled duty time and since I had no desire to work over my time I followed the correct procedure. If this isn't acceptable to my manager, or someone senior to them then I will simply put the ball in their court and hand back most of my attendance calls from then on, or inform them on a daily basis to expect a phonecall when I have around an hour until my finishing time requesting what they would like done with the remainder of my delivery since I will be returning to the office to be signing out on my time... to the minute!

Just to add, these figures are based on rough estimations gained from 10 years experience on deliveries.

[steve1873]

If we want to maintain jobs then we have to capture more work including more parcels to replace falling revenue and falling volumes from both DSA and indeed end to end delivery.

Yodel only pay on successful delivery , as do other companies.

Royal Mail have lost 30% year on year traffic from Amazon based on them deciding to do there ow delivery or paying self employed drivers.

The biggest single complaint from a customer is a 739 complaint it costs £25 to handle every complaint and then there is compensation on top to be paid.

Now if your not in an area where Amazon parcels have not declined and have either the same amount of attendance calls or more then if it takes you more time then this should be registered all be it the trials have shown that there is little overall difference from delivering to neighbour then having to pouch off and redeliver on a seperate day as requested by the customer.

Now some may not like this but we are in a different competitive world where the big supply companies like Amazon , ASOS and many more demand more. First time delivery arrangements or you don't get their business.

The CWU have to look at protecting jobs in that kind of market and if that means that you fill up your duty or even have to adjust your duty then that is what a responsible union would do in today's climate. There are many companies who failed to adapt to competition who have gone to the wall , KODAK , Woolwoth and Blockbusters are just 3 of many.

The joint statement still allows where a post person deems it unsafe to deliver to neighbour to use his or her discression. However how many parcels leave an office on a day and how many are 739 and put in the callers office before the OPG goes put. The PDA trials in the 20 offices have demonstrated that this is the case in some of those offices.

In that case, then that is a management issue at a local level and should be stamped out. If this is knowingly going on in offices then I have to question why the managers in said offices have not been taken to task for failing to ensure their OPG's are not wilfully delaying the delivery of parcels. If OPG's are being dishonest enough to carry out this practice at present, what is this new "agreement" going to do to put a stop to it? They will simply put a sticker on the parcel, circle that an attempted neighbour delivery was attempted and then go about their delivery as they normally would.

[General Mannerheim]

yeah but your not saving jobs are you though dingo.
If delivery posties are bringing back less parcels then there is less need to have staff doing the callers office duty...we have already had management touting to lapse indoor duties,the feckin wasters.When will the lapse everything in sight ever end?

I notice we have have more managers then ever, mediators a plenty if there is any sign of workplace unrest,World Class Mail bumboys staring at each other everyday over there laptops and management stooges disguised as `workplace coaches`yet they seem invulnerable to any lapsing or cuts.
And then to top it all are the reps swanning around on paid release or swanning off on `joint` courses every other week,,it takes the feckin piss.